The Objective and Subjective Participle Constructions

Objective Participle Construction

The Objective Participle Construction is a construction in which the participle is in predicate relation to a noun in the common case or a pronoun in the objective case.

In The Objective Participle Construction Participle Indefinite Active or Participle II is used. In the sentence this construction has the function of a complex object.

The Objective Participle Construction may be found:

after verbs denoting sense perception, such as to see, to hear, to feel, to find, etc.

I heard my wife coming… (Conan Doyle)

You will probably find your sister grown, Bella. (Dickens)

after some verbs of mental activity, such as to consider, to understand.

I consider myself engaged to Herr Klesmer. (Eliot)

after verbs denoting wish, such as to want, to wish, to desire. In this case, only Participle II is used.

The governor wants it done quick. (Bennett)

after the verbs to have and to get ;after these verbs only Participle II is used.

In this case The Objective Participle Construction shows that the action expressed by the participle is performed at the request of the person denoted by the subject of the sentence. Thus I had the piano tuned means ‘I made someone tune the piano’.

In interrogative and negative sentences the auxiliary verb to do is used:

Why don’t you have your hair waved? (Du Maurier)

Occasionally the meaning of the construction is different :it may show that the person denoted by the subject of the sentence experiences the action expressed by the participle.

The wounded man had his leg amputated.

The Subjective Participle Construction

The Subjective Participle Construction is a construction in which the participle (mostly Participle I) is in predicate relation to a noun in the common case or a pronoun in the nominative case , which is the subject of the sentence .

The peculiarity of this construction is that it does not serve as one part of the sentence: one of its component parts has the function of the subject ,the other forms part of a compound verbal predicate.

They were heard talking together… ( Collins)

This construction is chiefly used after verbs of sense perception.

The horse was seen descending the hill. (Hardy)

The Nominative Absolute Participle Construction

The Nominative Absolute Participle Construction is a construction in which the participle stands in predicate relations to a noun in the common case or a pronoun in the nominative case; the noun or pronoun is not the subject of the sentence.

The door and the window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. (Dickens)

In the Nominative Absolute Participle Construction Participle I (in all its forms) or Participle II is used. This construction is used in the function of an adverbial modifier:

The lamp having been lit, Mrs. Macallan produced her son’s letter. (Collins)

This duty completed, he had three months’ leave. (Hard)

It being now pretty late, we took our candles and went upstairs. (Dickens)

A knock had come to the door , and there being nobody else to answer it, Clare went out. (Hardy)

In this function the Nominative Absolute Participle Construction is mostly placed at the end of the sentence.

He turned and went, we, as before, following him. (Jerome)

One morning he stood in frond of the tank , his nose almost pressed to the glass. (Dreiser)

In this function the Nominative Absolute Participle Construction occurs but seldom and is almost exclusively used with the participles permitting and failing.

Weather (time, circumstances) permitting, we shall start tomorrow.

Conciliation failing, force remains; but force failing, no further hope of conciliation is left.

The Nominative Absolute Participle Construction very often occurs in fiction and scientific literature; the use of this construction in colloquial English is rare.

The Prepositional Absolute Participle Construction with Participle I

A prepositional absolute construction differs from a non-prepositional participial construction in that it is introduced by the preposition with. Its nominal part is usually a noun in the common case, or very rarely a personal pronoun in the objective case. It is not necessarily set off by a comma:

Andrew went into the house with his heart beating fast.

The main syntactical function of the construction is an adverbial modifier of attendant circumstances, as in:

The officer sat with his long fine hands lying on the table perfectly still.

The meaning of attendant circumstances may be combined with temporal or causal ones:

I won’t speak with him staring at me like that.

Just now, with the harvest coming on, everything looks its richest.

It (St. John’s Wood) is ever so pretty with all the trees coming out.

The prepositional absolute construction with participle II

This construction is introduced by the preposition with and its nominal element is hardly ever presented by a pronoun; it is more closely related to the predicate verb and is seldom set off by a comma.

She went on reading with her eyes fixed on the pages of the book.

It is unhealthy to sleep with the windows shut.

The main syntactical function of the construction is that of an adverbial modifier of manner or attendant circumstances.

An additional idea of time, reason, or condition may be prompted by the context, as in: I can’t walk with my leg broken (reason).

Conclusion

In the present work I attempted to investigate the Participles, such part of speech formed from a verb that does not function as a verb. I chose the Participle Constructions as the theme of my work because I was interested in it. I used different kind of references to investigate the Participles. In other words, I studied the main aspects of English verbals: grammatical characteristics, their syntactical role, their semantics, and the rules of correct use of them.

A verbal is a part of speech formed from a verb that does not function as a verb. Verbals are sometimes referred to as non-finite verbs, meaning they do not, as finite verbs do, agree in person, number, and tense with a subject. Verbals do not take a subject; however, they can take a direct object or indirect object, and can be modified like verbs. There are three types of verbals: gerunds, participles, and infinitives.

A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed. The term verbal indicates that a participle, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being. However, since they function as adjectives, participles modify nouns or pronouns. There are two types of participles: present participles and past participles. Present participles end in -ing. Past participles end in -ed, -en, -d, -t, or -n, as in the words asked, eaten, saved, dealt, and seen. A participial phrase is a group of words consisting of a participle and the modifier(s) and/or (pro)noun(s) or noun phrase(s) that function as the direct object(s), indirect object(s), or complement(s) of the action or state expressed in the participle.

All the verbals can form predicative constructions. They consist of two elements: a nominal (noun or pronoun) and a verbal (participle, gerund or infinitive). The verbal element stands in predicate relation to the nominal element. That is to say it stands in the subject and the predicate of the sentence. In most cases predicative constructions form syntactic units, serving as one part of the sentence.